Internet radio and video have become a popular way to distribute content as an alternative to traditional over the air television and radio. Some radio stations broadcast their content both over the air and over the Internet. Broadcasting refers to making content available to one or more receivers or users, where the content is made available live or in real time. The content may be recorded and distributed live (e.g., a sports event or company meeting) or predetermined (e.g., an Internet radio station broadcasts a predetermined playlist of music files such that all listeners listen to the same music at any given point in time). Unlike audio or video on demand, in which an entire media file is available for downloading at once, broadcasting makes content available in limited portions at a time, often as it is being recorded. With Internet radio and video broadcasting, multiple listeners or viewers can click on an Internet radio or video channel and listen or view media the same stream of content at the same time.
There are multitudes of audio and video broadcast channels available on the Internet, and a user may be interested in content being broadcast by more than one channel. For example, a user may be listening to a classic rock channel, but is also interested in receiving a weather report being periodically broadcast by a news channel. Typically, a user switches back and forth between the two channels to keep checking whether the weather report has started. Alternatively, the user could watch both channels simultaneously, though this may be confusing since two audio tracks are both playing, and the user still needs to glance back and forth between the two video displays. It would be useful to have a technique for monitoring content on channels not currently being viewed or listened to. In addition to Internet broadcast channels, it would be useful to have such techniques available for other types of broadcast channels, including television and radio.